Hi friends,
who do you think is the greatest scientist of all time? Albert Einstein or Sir Isaac Newton? The royal society of Britain is doing a poll to determine who people think is greater between these two. lets see how Nepalese think on this.

For me, I would go for Einstein. Because, although Newton did what he did 3 centuries ago, Einstein's was a much difficult deduction.
Saying that, Einstein got the breathing air because Newton achieved so many things from scratch. So what do you reckon-Einstein or Newton?

Here's the link to vote:
- http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3848

Even speaking "spiritually" creation/destruction theory and its inclination towards buddhist thoughts of life and afterlife makes sense.Our souls are neither created nor destroyed.They only change forms.Ofcourse...

लन्ली कता कता मिलेन जस्तो लाग्यो कि लाइट को भेलोसिटि २९ इ७ मि पर सेक हो हइ साच्चैमा ?

Yup nep....the speed of ligh ist = 299 792 458 m / s

Well of course they both were the greatest but despite the fact that I like Einstein more than Newton, Newton paved the path that made Einstein easier to walk further. Hmmm!!

Einstein. Purely because, these days, when there is something that requires some brain activity , we go" wow, u einstein u!" Newton is nowhere near.This thread needs some heavyweight writers to simplify things. In english if u please... the kind we read.. not the kind we read in encyclopedias.. thank you very muich!!:P

Gone with the wind...

guys, i think de vinci was the greatest

None of them.
There are other great physicist who contributed more then these two guys.

Shree 5 Gyane is the best!!

Hehe... seems lots of people don't like their world to be unpredictable... ?ctually Newton's laws hold up quite well actually, until you get into relativistic velocities (very very fast).

By the way read: Science vs. The Cosmological and Teleological Arguments- Fritz Allhoff

As usual the skepticism raised here over the poll about who you regard as the worlds greatest scientist draws parallel to cynical, ambiguous Nepali culture, which is contributing to our unique heterogeneity. But I wouldn't call the attempt of distinguished scholars of the Royal Society as useless. There can be poll to determine the worlds greatest sportsman/politicians/entertainers; beautiful /sexy woman and handsome man etc than why not about the greatest scientist? I mean its just a curiosity about how the world percieve science and scientific achievements. I can't find any fault in recognizing who is regarded a greater scientist between the two.

Now, Newton derived the laws of motion, gravitation which paved the way for Einstein to formulate the theory of relativity and for other scientists to work on statics and dynamics. But then Newton was not the first scientist to work on the subject. There was Coppernicus, albeit proven wrong, hundreds of years earlier and there was Kepler and Gallileo as well. So we can't give all the credits to Newton for modernising science. Ofcourse his works can't be undermined but his idea came by watching nature. He deduced his calculations from simple existing natural phenomena.

But look at what Einstein did. His works are truly out of the world. Defining time and space and light and packing everything of the universe within a single theory is something special. With Newtons laws of motion, see the scientific achievement between the 17th and 19th century. And with Einsteins theory of relativity, see the achievements in the 20th century. While Newton was a genius, Einstein was a super genius. I have already voted for Einstein anyways.

The evolution and achievement of science vs. time is exponential. Thus, the achievements made after Newton will obviously be less than those after Einstein. I think Newton's laws were ahead of his time and so are Einstein's. So, it doesn't make any sense to compare them, both are genius in their own merit. BTW my preference is Newton and I would have voted for Da Vinci, if he was in the option.

I think Newton's own saying speaks it loud:
"If I could see further that's because I was standing on top of Giants".

1.The Greek guy who measured the radius of the Earth back then (2000 years ago)
(the guy would have obscured any programmer of today in imagination)
3. Galileo (500 yrs ago)
4. Newton (400 yrs ago)
5. Danish chap who actually found out almost precisely the speed of light just using a telescope (300 yrs ago) and a timer
5. Einstein (hundred years ago)
7. rohini_a (rediscovering the human sexuality) now

The Oscar goes to rohini_a

No hard feeling, please!

Einstein is gonna make a clean sweep in this contest. While Newton is a great scientist, who to some extent paved a way for upcoming and inspiring scientists of his era, Einstein's theory of relativity and its wide range of applications in space and atomic science is truly unbeliavable and will continue to be useful for many more years to come.

Newton's decoded simple laws of nature with reasonably easy mathematics formulation which was a breakthrough of its kind of his period and truly an inspiration for following scientists. Einstein, arguably the genius scientist of all era, on the other hand came from nowhere and formulated an amazing relation between time, mass and velocity whose practicability seemed intricated at that period but eventually proven to be true experimentally.

So in my view its gonna be Einstein all the way.

Typos:
unbeliavable-unbelievable
intricated- intricate

Sorry about that.

Mr Hunk,
>>Newton's decoded simple laws of nature with reasonably easy mathematics

I did not know it was that easy for Newton as it was for you to put it. Galileo would have formulated it if it was that simple.

>>Einstein, arguably the genius scientist of all era, on the other hand came from nowhere and formulated an amazing relation between time, mass and velocity whose practicability seemed intricated at that period but eventually proven to be true experimentally.
No question that Einstein gave a new direction to science, and is a great one. But just to say he came out of ordinary from all the great ones is a little too much. For me Calculus alone should have dwarfed Einstein's all contributions... and could Einstein have done without it. And who discovered (or co-discovered it)! Maxwell, Planck already had these ideas and some of their own theories before Einstein.

>>So in my view its gonna be Einstein all the way.
You are probably right. Newton was not less of a genius.
----
The way you put it, anyone by now would have formulated Einstein's theory if not done by Einstein (including me:-).

Both the Newtonian and Einsteinian theories were able to solve many puzzles of the times. Newton was more cautious in proposing theories and worked ahead with research programs, and Einstein was more imaginative (more revolutionary), however both are great!

However, both of them knew that their theories were never true, just were better and better over time. In this sense, Einsteinian theories were somewhere nearer to the truth. He was in fact on the advantage as he knew many problems that were unsolved by Newtonian and other theories.

thing common to both of them is that their sources of deductions of theories were pure mathematics and logic, not their observations. Here what Einstein says about mathematics:

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." Albert Einstein ( Jan 27, 1921)

We know that mathematical laws can be proved (so are certain), so they are not real.

what i think is that choosing one is just a mistake unless you use a fair coin to select one of them randomly. However, it is amazing to know that Einstein conjectured that light should bend near the heavy bodies such as the Sun. How his mathematics and logic helped him to reach this conclusion is a puzzle, as neither he nor any scientists of the time observed that phenomenon before his implication. it's 50-50.

Incorrect notion:
"From my knowledge mass of an object decreases if the object is accelerated making energy constant"...

You are slightly confused here.

It is the opposite. The mass increases as a particle speeds up. As the velocity approaches "c", the mass is so large that any added energy is not sufficient to raise the velocity beyond "c". Thats the way mother nature does it.

For example, a rocket accelerates only after gaining more Kinetic energy from some other source of energy-maybe chemical energy in fuel. Although, the total energy of the system (rocket's KE + fuel's Chemical energy) remains constant, the Kinetic energy of the rocket surely builds up at the expense of fuel's chemical energy.

Another note to anyone interested:
IN my experience, our undergrad physics stops around 1940's. Mostly, our teachers are unable to explain us the modern physics and/or we soon lose interest. In the last 60 years or so, QED and other quantum theories have taken over physics. Every earlier theory, except gravitation and nuclear reaction, has been beautifully explained by the quantum theory. Physicists' quest now is to find a unified theory- that can unite the quantum theory (theory of the smallest scale) and gravitation (theory of the large).

right on rajeshhamal.

When a particle/object travels close to the speed of light, and is thus considered "relativistic", the energy (since momentum is a measure of energy) of the particle is expressed as momentum = (gamma)*mass*velocity. Here gamma is a relativistic factor that is greater than unity. So, one could consider the factor (gamma)*mass a new mass, one that is larger than the mass of the particle when it is at rest. This is why you hear that mass increases when you approach the speed of light. It can be argued that it is only an appearance of greater mass, or that it depends on how you look at the problem. In short, it is all relative. ;) It should be noted, however, that in order for an object to actually reach the speed of light, it must have no mass, since E=mass*speed of light^2. This is true of massless particles such as the photon, the "particle" that transports light. (Notation:* means multiply by and ^2 means squared).

various versions of the argument that who is greater exists, but as Newton said, and someone previously pointed out "We are tall only because we stand in the shoulders of giants". I doubt that Einstein would have been Einstein had Newton not formulated his laws a couple of hundred years ago and we must also remember the contributions of all the scientists in between from Gauss, Maxwell, DeBroglie etc to the modern day scientists like Feynmann et al.

If NEWTON had not contributed so much , there would not be any guy named einstein in human history for thousands of years to formulate his theory of relativity.... nowadays scientific community believes that if einstein had not discovered theory of relativity, then somebody else could have discovered it because the height of knowledge had been achieved at that era to derive relationship between space n time n light...

Satisfied, but I abandoned the paradigm of physics long ago. So, no idea what's the progress in it on this mordern age.

some of participants of the discussion on this thread seem to be modern physicists. can anybody explain why light bends near the sun (or why light carrier photons deviates near heavy objects like sun)? in a very plain language, please? i still keep interest on the progress in physical sciences, but can not understand the mechanisms behind such natural phenomena that modern physicists tend to explain.